Search

Background: Higher education attainment is linked to improved health and employment outcomes but the impact of university students' experiences of menstruation on their education is less clear. The objective of this review was to synthesise qualitative and quantitative research on university students' menstrual experiences and educational impacts., Methods: Eligible studies were identified through systematic searching across eight peer-reviewed databases, websites for menstrual health organisations, grey literature databases, and reference lists of included studies. Eligible studies must have reported on at least one of the antecedents or components of menstrual experience outlined in the integrated model of menstrual experience in relation to university students or reported on the impact of their menstrual experiences on their education. Study characteristics and findings were extracted, analysed and presented as a narrative synthesis. The quality of evidence was assessed with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. This study is registered on PROSPERO, number CRD42020178470., Results: Eighty-three studies were eligible for inclusion. Most studies (n = 74; 89%) were quantitative and the highest proportion of studies were conducted in lower-middle-income countries (n = 31; 37%). Self-reported dysmenorrhea, other physical and emotional menstrual-related symptoms, and menstrual stigma contributed to negative menstrual experiences among female students. Very few studies considered the menstrual experiences of non-binary and transgender menstruating students, and culturally diverse students. Dysmenorrhea contributed to university absenteeism, impaired participation and concentration, and declining academic performance. Inadequate sanitation facilities for menstrual management and challenges containing menstruation also negatively impacted education., Conclusions: Female university students' experiences of menstruation can negatively impact their education, highlighting the need for program and policy responses at university to improve students' wellbeing and educational engagement. Further research on the menstrual experiences of gender diverse, migrant and international students is needed as there is insufficient evidence to date., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: Gender-related norms and poverty remain important structural barriers to secondary school attendance among adolescent girls in southern India. We analyse how gender norms interact with family deprivation and dynamics to result in girls dropping out of school; we identify the main facilitators of school retention and changes to gender socialisation., Methods: Longitudinal qualitative case studies with 36 girls were nested within a cluster randomized trial to evaluate the Samata intervention targeting adolescent girls in Bagalkote and Vijayapura districts in northern Karnataka. We used two rounds of in-depth interviews, conducted in 2014 at a time when respondents were in 8th standard at the age of 13 to 14 and sixteen months later. We combined thematic and narrative analyses., Results: Our study found that poverty and socioeconomic realities at the household level strongly affect conformity with discriminatory gender practices such as restricting girls' mobility. The value placed on education by parents clearly differentiates the regular school goers from those frequently absent and others who dropped out. With active encouragement of the girls' educational and career aspirations, parents engendered the girl's agency to communicate openly both at home and at school, allowing subtle changes to gender performance while resisting the pressure of social sanctions. In contrast, where educational aspirations were weak, parents invested more intensely in enforcing correct performance of gender, prioritising her well-being by aiming to secure her future in a good marriage. Among poorer families, girls' domestic duties came at the cost of schooling with concerns about protecting her sexual purity predominating., Conclusions: In contexts where a strong gender ideology of virginity before marriage rules, subtle shifts in harmful gender practices are possible. Interventions aiming to improve education need to target the most deprived families, focussing on trust building through open communication., Competing Interests: On behalf of all the co-authors, Satyanarayana Ramanaik declares no competing interests in this study. Our funders, namely, DFID and ViiV Healthcare, had no direct role in designing the study, data collection, analysis, preparation of the manuscript, or the decision to publish. However, technical support was provided by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University of Manitoba while designing the study, data analysis, and preparation of the manuscript. Being ViiV Healthcare is a commercial source of funding, we declare no competing interest of ViiV Healthcare relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, marketed products etc. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

We sought to explore parental attitudes, behaviors, and barriers regarding school readiness in a county clinic serving low income, Latino children. Between December 2013-September 2014, we conducted a cross sectional survey of parents during 3-6 years well-child appointments about school readiness (SR) across: (1) attitudes/behaviors; (2) barriers; and (3) awareness; and (4) use of local resources. Most parents (n = 210, response rate 95.6%) find it very important/important for their child to know specific skills prior to school: take turns and share (98.5%), use a pencil and count (97.6%), know letters (99.1%), colors (97.1%), and shapes (96.1%). Over 80% of parents find education important and engage in positive SR behaviors: singing, practicing letters, or reading. Major barriers to SR were lack of knowledge for kindergarten readiness, language barriers, access to books at home, constraints on nightly reading, difficulty completing school forms, and limited free time with child. Awareness of local resources such as preschool programs was higher than actual utilization. These low-income, Latino parents value SR but lack knowledge to prepare their child for school and underutilize community resources such as free preschool programs. Pediatricians are uniquely positioned to address these needs, but more evidence-based interventions are needed., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Background: School-based physical education is an important public health initiative as it has the potential to provide students with regular opportunities to participate in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Unfortunately, in many physical education lessons students do not engage in sufficient MVPA to achieve health benefits. In this trial we will test the efficacy of a teacher professional development intervention, delivered partially via the Internet, on secondary school students' MVPA during physical education lessons. Teaching strategies covered in this training are designed to (i) maximize opportunities for students to be physically active during lessons and (ii) enhance students' autonomous motivation towards physical activity., Method: A two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial with allocation at the school level (intervention vs. usual care control). Teachers and Year 8 students in government-funded secondary schools in low socio-economic areas of the Western Sydney region of Australia will be eligible to participate. During the main portion of the intervention (6 months), teachers will participate in two workshops and complete two implementation tasks at their school. Implementation tasks will involve video-based self-reflection via the project's Web 2.0 platform and an individualized feedback meeting with a project mentor. Each intervention school will also complete two group peer-mentoring sessions at their school (one per term) in which they will discuss implementation with members of their school physical education staff. In the booster period (3 months), teachers will complete a half-day workshop at their school, plus one online implementation task, and a group mentoring session at their school. Throughout the entire intervention period (main intervention plus booster period), teachers will have access to online resources. Data collection will include baseline, post-intervention (7-8 months after baseline) and maintenance phase (14-15 months after baseline) assessments. Research assistants blinded to group allocation will collect all data. The primary outcome will be the proportion of physical education lesson time that students spend in MVPA. Secondary outcomes will include leisure-time physical activity, subjective well-being, and motivation towards physical activity., Discussion: The provision of an online training platform for teachers could help facilitate more widespread dissemination of evidence-based interventions compared with programs that rely exclusively on face-to-face training., Trial Registration: Australia and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry- ACTRN12614000184673 . Registration date: February 19, 2014.

The foremost purpose of this empirical study was to explore the role of e-learning in the preparedness of preschool children in the incorporation of the values of sustainable development in pre-school students. The paradigm of the study was interpretivism and the phenomenology design was used for this qualitative investigation. Through the judgemental sampling technique, 30 preschool children and eight teachers were selected. An observation checklist and interview protocol were prepared to measure the role of technology (e-learning) in the Preparedness of Preschool Children for Incorporating the values of Sustainable Development through E-Learning and how e-learning Sustain or Retains Future Demands of preschool children. Four themes (Television, Mobiles phone, tablets and digital gadgets) were noted during the analysis of data by N-Vivo-10. The results indicate that TV and Mobile Phones were the most used tools for Childers for incorporation of the standards and values of sustainable development in the preschool children.

The effort to promote interdisciplinary research in development and global education risks the erosion of its core values by more theoretically established fields of development. This becomes urgent when little research attention is given to strengthening the theoretical foundation of core concepts and themes, such as global poverty and inequality, that are grounded in knowledge from field experience. This article responds to the influence of neoclassical literature about poverty and spatial inequality that propagates a discourse shift from poor countries to poor people. Intersectionality is explored as a paradigm that can reconcile this new thinking with the social justice pedagogy of development education and that enables an understanding of the asymmetries in current patterns of poverty and spatial inequality.

Introduction: Despite the large number of adolescents and young adults in employment training programs, a population that has poorer health and greater health risk than similarly aged in-school peers, we are unaware of any health interventions that have been evaluated in this setting. The primary objective of our study was to evaluate changes in depressive symptoms, coping strategies, and receipt of mental health services among low-income African American adolescents and young adults receiving a mental health intervention integrated into an employment training program., Methods: The intervention consisted of an on-site mental health clinician, a peer-led depression prevention intervention, and training sessions for employment training staff. A pretest-posttest design assessed depressive symptoms, coping strategies, and receipt of mental health services at baseline and 12-month follow-up. Complete baseline and follow-up data were available for 136 of 218 eligible participants. Most study participants were African American (98%); average age was 18.8 years., Results: The intervention had no effect on depressive symptoms or coping strategies. The percentage of participants who used mental health services at follow-up increased, but not significantly. Age was associated with use of active and support-seeking coping strategies, whereas use of mental health services before program enrollment was associated with use of mental health services at follow-up., Conclusion: Alternative intervention strategies may be needed to decrease the severity of depressive symptoms and increase use of coping strategies among adolescents and young adults in employment training programs. Future research evaluating such interventions should use quasi-experimental or experimental designs to provide evidence of intervention effect.

Background: The current food, fuel, and financial crises have highlighted the importance of school feeding programs both as a social safety net for children living in poverty and food insecurity, and as part of national educational policies and plans., Objective: To examine the costs of school feeding, in terms of both the absolute cost per child and the cost per child relative to overall education expenditure and gross domestic product (GDP) in low-, middle-, and high-income countries., Methods: Data on the costs of school feeding in different countries were collected from multiple sources, including World Food Programme project data, reports from government ministries, and, where such searches failed, newspaper articles and other literature obtained from internet searches. Regression models were then used to analyze the relationships between school feeding costs, the per capita costs of primary education and GDP per capita., Results: School feeding programs in low-income countries exhibit large variations in cost, with concomitant opportunities for cost containment. As countries get richer, however, school feeding costs become a much smaller proportion of the investment in education. The per capita costs of feeding relative to education decline nonlinearly with increasing GDP., Conclusions: These analyses suggest that the main reason for this decline in the relative cost of school feeding versus primary education is a greatly increased investment per child in primary education as GDP rises, but a fairly flat investment in food. The analyses also show that there appears to be a transitional discontinuity at the interface between the lower- and middle-income countries, which tends to coincide with changes in the capacity of governments to take over the management and funding of programs. Further analysis is required to define these relationships, but an initial conclusion is that supporting countries to maintain an investment in school feeding through this transition may emerge as a key role for development partners.

Curricular enhancements in early childhood education that are guided by the science of learning must be augmented by protective interventions informed by the biology of adversity. The same neuroplasticity that leaves emotional regulation, behavioral adaptation, and executive functioning skills vulnerable to early disruption by stressful environments also enables their successful development through focused interventions during sensitive periods in their maturation. The early childhood field should therefore combine cognitive-linguistic enrichment with greater attention to preventing, reducing, or mitigating the consequences of significant adversity on the developing brain. Guided by this enhanced theory of change, scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers must work together to design, implement, and evaluate innovative strategies to produce substantially greater impacts than those achieved by existing programs.

Conditional cash transfer schemes, which use cash to incentivize uptake of basic health and educational services, are well established among social planners inlow- and middle-income countries and are now taking hold in high-income countries. We appraised these schemes within a social determinants framework and found some encouraging signs in their first decade of operation. Success, however, has been inconsistent, and it is unclear whether conditional cash transfer schemes can reliably secure meaningful improvements in participants' health and nutritional status or educational attainment. Conditional cash transfer schemes' objectives will not be met unless they are transformed in 3 ways: transferring power as well as resources, emphasizing entitlements alongside conditionality, and avoiding the trap of incoherent or residualized policy.

What if access to an education in the United States required insurance, leaving millions of children without a school? Would public insurance for education--Educaid look like public insurance for medical care--Medicaid? This essay describes a fictional education system analogous to our current health care system as a means to highlight some of US health care's failings. It incorporates real comments from parents whom we have interviewed about their experiences gaining access to health care services for their children. My purpose is to challenge each reader to consider the future for both the US education and health care systems, the urgent need for reform, and how major reforms might affect our children.

Objectives: This study assessed the effect of poverty and social inequity on infant mortality risks in Nicaragua from 1988 to 1993 and the preventive role of maternal education., Methods: A cohort analysis of infant survival, based on reproductive histories of a representative sample of 10,867 women aged 15 to 49 years in León, Nicaragua, was conducted. A total of 7073 infants were studied; 342 deaths occurred during 6394 infant-years of follow-up. Outcome measures were infant mortality rate (IMR) and relative mortality risks for different groups., Results: IMR was 50 per 1000 live births. Poverty, expressed as unsatisfied basic needs (UBN) of the household, increased the risk of infant death (adjusted relative risk [RR] = 1.49; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.15, 1.92). Social inequity, expressed as the contrast between the household UBN and the predominant UBN of the neighborhood, further increased the risk (adjusted RR = 1.74; 95% CI = 1.12, 2.71). A protective effect of the mother's educational level was seen only in poor households., Conclusions: Apart from absolute level of poverty, social inequity may be an independent risk factor for infant mortality in a low-income country. In poor households, female education may contribute to preventing infant mortality.

This article explores the diminishing role of federal government following a series of legislative mandates to maximize equal educational opportunity; it also examines the escalating poverty rate resulting from the economic restructuring of the country. It calls for systemic reform in education, health, and human services followed by an integration of these services.

The data presented here come from a 20-year study conducted in a rural area of Guatemala. Data on early biological indicators, graduated parameters of social structure, and preschool cognition were combined into a risk scale and analyzed in relation to primary school grade attainment and adolescent psychoeducational test performance. Similar to empirical relations reported in industrialized countries, performance declined as the number of risk factors to which a subject was exposed increased. More important, primary education was observed to buffer the effects of early risk for a subset of subjects. Subjects at high risk who stayed in school performed significantly better than subjects with similar levels of risk who completed fewer than 4 years of primary school.

"In recent years, poverty has become a serious issue in the socioeconomic development of China. One of the most important features of poverty is 'poor population quality', a factor that also causes poverty. Human resources development (HRD) strategies have been used as a weapon against poverty in many developing countries; some have proven to be quite effective. This article, which researches the relationship between HRD indicators and poverty status, finds that enhancement of education levels, improvement of health status, the gaining of skills and experience, increasing time away from home and choosing suitable occupations, all can contribute greatly to the reduction and alleviation of poverty.", (excerpt)

"This paper analyses the impact of three credit programmes--the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the Bangladesh Rural Development Board's Rural Development-12 (BRDB RD-12), and the Grameen Bank (GB), on current rate of contraception. These programmes are targeted to alleviate poverty by providing group-based credit to the rural poor in creating self employment opportunities. With small credits, these programmes combine family planning activities in terms of consciousness raising, awareness building and motivation. Sample survey data are used to analyse the problem of impact evaluation. The analyses show that the BRAC and the GB programmes have [a] significantly positive impact on the current rate of contraception, while the BRDB RD-12 programme does not have any such impact. It is also found that education, both of female[s] and male[s] separately, and child survivorship have independently positive impact[s] on current contraception.", (excerpt)

American children are worse off than those in the previous generation in several important dimensions of mental, physical, and emotional well-being. During the 1960s cultural changes adversely affected children while their material condition improved substantially. By contrast, material conditions deteriorated in the 1980s, especially among children at the lower end of the income distribution. Public policies to improve the material condition of children require a transfer of resources from households that do not have children to those that do. Government programs such as tax credits and child allowances are more efficient and equitable than employer-mandated programs.

Pre-colonial Africa was neither an educationally nor a technologically unsophisticated continent. While education was an integral part of the culture, issues of language identification and standardisation which are subject to contentious debate today were insignificant. Children learned community knowledge and history by asking questions instead of being taught in a hegemonic alien language. This article argues that education and development should take place in a broader context of human rights, and explores the links between three areas often dealt with separately, namely: language, education and development. The authors of this paper demonstrate that changing the face of the multi-dimensionalities of poverty within societies is possible only when education is constructed in a rights perspective over the favoured colonial languages, which are not an integral part of the culture and resources of a community. The authors make a distinction between the "right to education" and "rights in education," the latter of which are found to be more significant for the challenges Africa faces. It is argued here that the elements of Amartya Sen's "threshold" conditions for inclusion in human rights and self-development in education are essential, and that a more promising architecture of education would include what the authors term meta-narrative frameworks, i.e. interrelated policies. The authors contend that the neoliberal commodification of the knowledge sector has only exacerbated human rights and capabilities deprivation--which encompasses both human and income poverty.

Child poverty has been widely discussed in Germany since the publication of the third official Poverty and Wealth Report of the German government in 2008 which--inter alia--focused on the situation of children and families. However, child poverty is not only caused by low household incomes and impacts of child poverty are not only restricted to financial consequences. The capability approach takes into account this multidimensionality of well-being and poverty of children. It conceptualizes human well-being as not only depending on financial means but also gives the same importance to the personal and social conversion factors which determine how far financial means can be converted into personal well-being. Before 2008 the capability approach had only been applied to the well-being of adults in Germany, but not specifically to the well-being of children. However, there are several reasons why a capability analysis for children will differ from a capability analysis for adults. Adults' capability sets comprise dimensions that are less relevant for small children while other valuable capabilities have to be added. Furthermore the capability set depends to a large extent on the age of the child. The paper focuses on a multidimensional poverty analysis in the capability perspective of 5-6 years old children. In the domains of "Education/Leisure", "Health", "Social Participation" and "Income" child poverty is measured by predefined indicators. The relationship to the social and personal conversion factors of the caretakers is then evaluated. Additionally, a multidimensional poverty measure is analyzed.

Normative thinking around democracy often emphasizes the supremacy of electoral politics, underplaying the salience of education as a defining feature to produce a more meaningful, engaged, inclusive form of democracy. Critical pedagogy can be an extremely useful, illuminating and transformative means and process of deconstructing how democracy is conceptualized, understood and developed. Critiquing the epistemological, experiential and hegemonic predispositions, manifestations, and intricate thinking that underpin inequitable power relations is fundamental to achieving a more politically literate and liberated populace. Being humble enough to acknowledge that one's epistemological framework may limit his/her understanding of democracy--along with a diagnosis of mainstream and normative assessments that are constrained by a tepid educational experienced dominated by a neo-liberal political economy--is fundamental to re-formulating how democracy is understood, and, more important, how it may become more empowering for marginalized groups and all peoples. This paper explores a re-conceptualization of democracy, premised on a more critical and engaged education, questioning and problematizing how power works. In outlining "econ-ocracy" and various conditions, issues and determinants related to democracy, the author provides some examples (American Idol, Haiti, categorization of democracies, development assistance to the South, and support for unsavory regimes) of how facile interpretations of democracy have had a nefarious effect on more structurally relevant concerns related to power. (Contains 7 figures and 24 notes.)